How much credit does Malcolm McLaren deserve for the Pistols?
He created the band. Malcolm was an artist, but then he went into selling clothes to make a living, but very confrontational kind of clothes. He was selling S&M masks with a zipper for a mouth and someone called The Cambridge Rapist used that mask to disguise himself. It was a highly-publicized case, and the police wanted Malcolm to release their client list. There were other places to get those masks, so Malcolm wouldn’t release it, and instead made a t-shirt of a picture of somebody in the mask saying “The Cambridge Rapist” just to provoke people. It was just a confrontational, make-you-think kind of thing. But he saw the New York Dolls and loved them and they were so outrageous and realized how much media attention they got. But Malcolm arrived in New York too late because Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan were pretty well into the dope and Arthur Kane was passing out from being way too drunk. There wasn’t much left of the band. So he pulled them together and he got Johnny and Jerry i
